Etro / Fall 2012 RTW

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This is the thing about going to the collections; sometimes what can seem like a one-off notion gains traction, and before you know it, it’s shaping up to be one of the more insistent impulses coursing through the shows. That said, it’s not always necessarily because of its prevalence, but because it stands out as something different. Such is the case with the neo–Edwardian dandy suiting, by way of the sixties and seventies, that made an appearance at Etro, having already strode out with such conviction on a few runways of late that it might as well have been confidently twirling a cane. (These are the women’s collections after all; you wouldn’t expect any twirling of a mustache.) Thankfully, it’s a lot less historicist than it sounds. At Prada, for instance, Miuccia Prada turned it into lean high-button jackets with cropped kick-flare pants worn with nineties club-kid platform shoes. (Shoes are having a very Leigh Bowery/Michael Alig moment right now.)

Meanwhile, at Etro, Veronica Etro did it her way, by incorporating it into her new idea of print dressing, a category the house has owned since, well, forever: a longer, leaner, body-conscious line (her killer velvet evening dresses, for instance) that allows for all sorts of interplay with pattern (paisley, specifically) and three-dimensional shaping (peplums-as-belts galore, over pencil skirts). Her foppish tailoring was, she said backstage, a way of feminizing the masculine suit, so she made her jackets—in velvet, jacquard, and tweed—sharply waisted and jutting at the hips, then partnered them with supernarrow trousers. Elsewhere, she buttoned a shapely frock coat over the same pants and turned the gentleman’s silk scarf into a fur collar layered with a sizeable jet necklace. It’s interesting, this idea of transforming men’s suiting, albeit from another era, to make it look so curvaceous. For the longest time, the impulse was to look coolly louche and androgyne in pieces borrowed directly from the boys, but this reverts to the idea of making men’s clothes look distinctly shaped for a woman’s body. And even more interesting is that that impulse is coming from two female designers with very different viewpoints. Whatever is driving this, one thing is for sure: your boyfriend’s/husband’s/brother’s closets just became no-go zones.